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We certainly are spoilt these days - when I started in 3D, everything that you needed, you had to make yourself. Then came cd-roms of content which you lap up because it meant that you didn't have to model everything from scratch yourself, even though some of the models were pretty ropey to be honest. Compared to the figures and clothing and all the rest that is available today, we are just so lucky.
Dart, thank you so much for kind words and useful advices! You gave me the food for thoughts about my Dino. I have some Carrara native outdoor scenes made by me from scratch without any templates and presets. And I have some trees made separately in Blender and Hexagon. Maybe it's a good idea to try to compile all those things together.
Character AND scene is what I was thinking...
So how would one include morphs, poses and texture variations with a Carrara package?!?
This is a good spot for requests, you don't know who could be watching.
wait... explain what you mean by "use MakeHuman"?
http://www.makehuman.org/
they import rigged in Carrara, I am unsure if the Blender Bastoni stuff does as never gotten anything rigged in from Blender
Agreed. But of course a short animation takes those elements as just part of the recipe. The fun for me is using them to tell a story. I admit that some 3D products inspire the story, my latest experience was with Cybertenko's "Rocketship":
I recently installed the newest (and regretfully deleted the older) MakeHuman, and had a terrible time trying to get a proper rig/figure. What export options/format are you using?
Im starting to think Carrara characters is deadend/redundant journey =/ We've just grown too comfortable with the Poser/Studio tools/methods. I cant think of any "outstanding" feature to bank on that couldnt be applied to an existing character with a library of presets at my disposable. Nonetheless, the rigging tools in Carrara are "perfect" for my voxel models. workaround, sidestep, doesnt matter. Im not "too" concerned with things like "full body morphs", unique characters should stand alone and be "as is". Texturevariations can be saved/applied as shader presets, but how does one distribute pose presets for a uniquely rigged in carrara character? Face/expressions? Eye movement?
Someone help me on a feature to be banked on for carrara figures, PLEASE. make me feel bad =(
sometimes, just once every now and then, we have to allow creativity to take its course... Carrara IS a market, regardless... My Urban Triplex did well, and I cant begin to think of how many Poser/Studio furniture sets are available (tho none as "complete" as mine =P).
Also.... Maybe just being able to rig/use voxel models is a sell point all its own?!?
i dont know what a voxel model is
A proverbial lump of clay. You use tools similar to those in zbrush, but you sculpt out the model as opposed to morphing/moving existing polygons. The shape is made by the brush, it's not dependant on polygon design. Way more detail in the model without the use of bumps, normals or displacement, however you get triangled, high density models, no symmetry in the mesh. But this is awesome for organic models. It's hard to take advantage of in a poser minded community, of which, I am a proud member =P
For pose presets you could use NLA / Create Master Pose, this allows you to save poses, expressions etc. You could of course fo the next step and include NLA Clips for walk cycles etc.
Voxels are a 3D equivalent of Pixels. If you imagine very small cubes making up your objects in 3D space, with the ability to add stuff and carve it out. This is the basis of 3DCoat. Carrara does not understand voxels, so the export from 3DCoat will need to convert to a polygon based model.
Vyusur... love that terrain!
I tried MakeHuman about 3 years ago... what a slog for a newbie modeller! The morph system is very basic, but I did learn a lot about character/figure manipulation.
This is something I showed before in a thread dealing with ten-second animations.
It was made when I first tried out Carrara as a newcomer to most things and I had also come across Sculptris. The figure was made in Sculptris and is obviously very imperfect. I decimated it a couple of times (IIRC) in Hexagon then made a very simple, first-attempt rig.
The animation arose only from trying out movements along the timeline and the result gave me the idea of adding an attack from spheres!
Since then I have 3dCoat - still to master. 3dCoat has superb sculpting, texturing and retopology tools. I am attracted to the idea of Carrara-rigged home-made figures. I especially like the old practice of having clothes as the only layer as we find in games. No need for a figure underneath if it's covered up. It struck me that the makehuman figures could be used for such characters. Keep their heads, hands, feet and delete all hidden body polygons. New Carrara characters could be made in this way and Makehuman figures have a very free licence which would probably allow this usage, even for sale (but check first).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlrlPJH2Uys
Carrara hair has unique value IMHO, although Poser has its version and Studio can use LAMH. Things like long hair styles and beards that react to wind and gravity in real time is something that a Carrara character could have built in. Similarly, a mane for a horse or a lion can be done dynamically directly on the figure.
maybe not much, but it is something.
Well, 3DCoat and sculptris both use voxels (I dont know any other program that does). This technology or method is just awesome. But of course both programs allow you to extract a mesh and export it to many formats, .obj being one.
Think of voxels more like shaped metaballs... They are, from a "finished" perspective, exponentially more powerful than polygons.
>>> voxelized genesis <<<
You can play with that, and it will make more sense.. My alien artifacts is made from voxels, and so is my gamma andromeda suit for v4 in the renderosity freestuff, so you can see it gives a range of output. I cant stress how powerful voxel tools can be.
Silene, thank you!
I agree that makehuman is good for educational purposes, but no further. It is simpler to make your own original figure that turn makehuman figure into something decent.
not tried latest MH either but have downloaded it
collada export worked best on older one
Does Sculptris use voxels?
It does have dynamic tesselation. In a program like Hexagon or Carrara, when you select some vertices of a model and pull them the adjoining faces stretch out. With dynamic tesselation, more faces appear in keeping with the rest of the topology as you stretch out the vertices. The same happens when many of the other tools for sculpting are used. I may be wrong but I think that was the innovation that caused Sculptris to be snapped up by Pixologic.
3dCoat also has this kind of dynamic sculpting. The freedom for the creator is helped by having powerful tools for retopologising the high-poly mesh. (Silo also has a retopology tool). Something I haven't yet tried is to create and export a high-detail normal map onto a low-poly mesh.
As said above, 3dCoat also has voxel sculpting.
As far as I know, Sculptris does not use voxels, it is using technique called adaptive subdivision, it does since it's first version
so what are voxels? is that a 3D Coat ONLY thing?
As I see, voxels is a boring thing that will never be of interest for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel
HI MAT :)
To save a set of poses for a custom character,.
You can use NLA to save Poses,. but it creates a standard Pose icon,. so, the file name, is the only way to differentiate between poses. (not ideal)
or you could create your own thumnail images to replace those default ones. ....See below.
you could use Puppeteer to save a bunch of pose dots,. those can be saved out as a puppeteer file. and imported,.
Which would give you a grid of saved pose dots,. where the user would be able to scroll around the Puppeteer grid to preview the poses,. and could Click a pose dot, to apply it to the figure. anywhere in the timeline.
Fenric has a Plugin to export BVH / PZ2 files,. then you could save out your figures poses as poser format (pz2), and create thumbnails in poser by saving again,.
or,. P3DO Explorer (PRO) version,.. allows you to create your own Carrara thumbnail images for carrara files which either don't normally have an image icon,.. or if you just want to replace the default saved file image icon for a perticular file,.
Voxels are great to work with,. think volumetric clay,. rather than fixed geometry like polygons or tri's,. .. A bit like Metaballs, in Carrara, on steroids.
you can create complex shapes by deleting, cutting or boolean functions,. and you can sculpt it, add and subtract from it using brushes.
Once you have a shape you like,. it get's converted into polygons, where you have control over density,. and you can then UV that and export as OBJ etc, into any 3D program.
It can be a very fast, and an almost natural way to model both hard and organic shapes,. but for me personally, it's been a challenge to not think about resolution while i'm modelling,
3D-Coat is the only general 3D editor that uses voxels as far as I know. It can be useful - for example you can store "negative space" objects or brushes that will create a specific shaped hole in a surface. I used some brushes that come with the program when I played with a trial version a few years ago - this was the result:
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/-medium-range-transport-/2167823/?p
Maybe I'm easy to impress, but...
I'm impressed! I've seen so many of your portraits, that I was beginning to assume that you did little else. Was I wrong! Excellent work, Phil.
Like you, I have a satisfaction with and a loyalty towards Carrara. But Matcreator is one of the good guys (pro-Carrara) here. If he has the ambition to make a character product which will be unique to Carrara users, I'm thankful.
Thank you - I do try to ring the changes occasionally!
well the latest makehuman worked ok for me
https://app.box.com/s/g4v1dd5h2a5iasxw2k0r82hkkbgzxd75
a file to try
https://vimeo.com/207816430
I retargetted it in iClone 3Dxchange to add the Carnegie Melon Uni mocap but the original loads the same as this one from FBX
I tweaked the shaders a bit
Well, I dont see how voxels could be considered "boring", LOL but to each his own. Check out some of the youtube video tutorials, and youll see just how amazing the voxel modeling tools are.
Also, I TOTALLY forget that voxel models can indeed be "retopped", making them "Poser Community Friendly"... That is a seriously HUGE advantage, dont know why i dont stop being lazy and learn how, lol...
However, I think it best for marketing to stick with Studio characters. But the rebel in me dictates i do it my way, muhahahahaha!!!!
It would be cool if we could add sound effects to our posts. But you guys should hear thunder and lighting in the background as you read this...
=)